


al niente

by psalloacappella



Series: Particles [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Blank Period, F/M, Starcrossed Lovers, Terminal Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29832474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: Her breath catches as she rolls to face him, insides roiling and dizzy as the sea. From the floor she meets his dark eyes and whimpers,“Don’t go. Not tonight.”His mausoleum pause could halt the axis turn of the universe.“Please.”
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: Particles [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919686
Comments: 25
Kudos: 52





	al niente

**Author's Note:**

> og twt snippet: [twt](https://twitter.com/psalloacappella/status/1359705461549899777?s=20)

> **al niente**
> 
> _music notation: (fade) to nothing_

❦

She comes to, blazing cheek crushed into the tatami weave, and the world is off-kilter, a disorienting view. 

The tang of saké a harsh film on the tongue, the bright popping pains where her bones are in contact with the floor, which relent no comfort. 

He’s close by.

“I’ve never seen you quite like this . . . ” 

He trails off, words like accelerant to her ready and waiting temper. She’s alight — perhaps she never reached true calm, even in her fuzzy memories of stumbling back home.

And he’s here, oh so concerned, feeling responsible. It rankles.

The _shut up_ falls sloppily, spoken to the mat rather than reaching him, failing halfway through — not unlike all her efforts. 

“Leave me alooone,” she moans, this time mean and clear. Is the humiliation stark enough? How many rejections can a girl take? 

And now he kneels.

“You’re frighteningly responsive, for shutting down the bar,” he says gently. “Your aim is also true.”

Green eyes stare at the weave still against her own face, the bit of twilight she can see from her pseudo-recovery pose. If that gesture’s his doing, she’ll drown in pity before dawn.

Her sigh sounds years long, bitter resignation she hasn’t felt since he returned. Sharp, heady. Unfair of her, maybe. “Please, just go. I can’t take you always seeing me pining. I’m sure it makes you sick.” 

“Enough.” His admonition comes at her back, acute, a wound.

And it kills her, the way his fingers trail on every vertebrae, playing their fraught and fragile song. He brushes hair behind her ear, tears cutting a salty path down her face, leaving a damp spot on the floor. 

“Is it easy, for you to leave things?” she hisses. “Leave me?”

Finally, she snags him. Pulls the open wound apart, that which they hate facing head-on. 

“So, you heard.” Anger at the edges of his voice. “Fucking Naruto and his big mouth.” 

“No! You never — you don’t get it.” Her own voice rises, echoes, bouncing off the tatami, rattling in her ears.

“I knew. I felt it in my bones, Sasuke-kun. That you’d,” and here she pauses, coughs and coughs and he rubs her back and it’s too _much,_ “that you’d go again. Make me wait.” 

And it’s apt, true, something lurks in her bones, but for now, all she feels is drunk and sad.

“I made a scene, huh?” she whispers. The aches in her joints tell her, the small red crescents in her pale moonlit hand, the way her puffy lip stings and kisses the mat weave. 

“A bit,” he confirms. “But I always make this mistake — forgetting how well you know me, Sakura.”

Her breath catches as she rolls to face him, insides roiling and dizzy as the sea. From the floor she meets his dark eyes and whimpers,

“Don’t go. Not tonight.”

His mausoleum pause could halt the axis turn of the universe.

“Please.” 

Her word snuffs out as a candle’s flame.

His fingers feel the weaved, hot divots branded into her cheek, courtesy of an inebriated landing and nap. 

“This will leave a mark,” he says gently. 

And he does stay, puts her dead weight to bed and ends up in there with her, finding it impossible to separate or unravel.

_  
  
_

There’s an odd pang of loneliness when she doesn’t see him off; he wonders about the reason. He’d known there was more than his departure occupying her mind, but she’d insisted they “not dwell on those things.” 

Ominous, and he knew better. 

Another failure. Missing the signs.

“Will you be here when I return?” he’d whispered against her hair under cover of a rainbow dawn. 

Her pause has the crushing sense of gravity. 

“We’ll see what the universe has to say.”

He knew: Her speech was too dreamy, too ungrounded, unlike her practical self.

It’s all he thinks about the minute he departs, lost in dimensions of crushing solitude, wishing he’d promised her something real - wishing he’d promised her the world, if only she could wait just a bit more. 

“It won’t be long,” he murmurs to himself. “Hold on, Sakura.”

  
  


Two days later, she sits in her office as a patient rather than a doctor, clutching the wrist that’s been aching with an alien pain, deep, some biological warfare simmering in her human shell. It’s spread, this thing, taking up residence in her joints and limbs. 

It’s confirmed.

It is one thing to lose to another shinobi in a tussle of strength, an enemy you can identify. 

This unseen sickness will take her, wither and drain her, and no one yet, even Tsunade, has unwound its insidious, metamorphosis assault. 

Ino berates her vow of silence.

“You’re unbelievable!” She’s nearly shrieking, voice reaching decibels unrecorded. “You didn’t say anything to him?” 

Sakura only stares out frosted glass windows and winces, holding her shoulder. 

“How could you?” Ino cries. “I’m writing to him! I’m telling Naruto! Your sensei!”

Sakura looks gaunt, pale, aware of the limp now nagging her right leg. The rivers of her tears cause permanent fjords of fear and salt. 

“He’ll be hard to find,” she whispers. “He always has been.” 

_(True to her word, Ino scours the world._

_True to Sakura’s, he’s hard to find.)_

In the middle of a desert he has a heart attack, at least that’s what he’d guess later. The words so desperate, unfiltered, and not even from her own hands, 

(which by then, were failing her, but he wouldn’t know.)

The mission is easy to abandon — and so are his principles.

Arrival: 36 hours too late, no romantic last minute moment in which he’d hold her hand, say he’d see her on the other side. 

Which he will, and soon. He knows it by the way the colors have left his life, the way his ghosts old and new beckon, tug and howl at his fraying edges.

The funeral is appropriate, gentle, and he makes it through half. If not for the firm grip of his ex-sensei, he’s not sure he and Naruto would have made it through at all. 

_(The urn belongs to her parents._

_He takes it anyway.)_

Kakashi stands sentry at her old apartment where Sasuke breathes but does not act like the living anymore, knowing the moment he returns to duty, he’ll be unable to prevent a cruel universe’s second summons, calling the other half home. 

It goes as fate decides, nothing more and nothing less.

Clichés all the way down — 

A man hard to love, a woman taken too soon with an ironic name to suit. 

No mess or dramatic displays, just the precise slice that wouldn’t kill a man of this caliber — it’s the broken heart, they’ll say in the stories; tragic love, they’ll whisper.

He fades out, chilled cheek crushed against the tatami weave, tangy copper the last taste on his lips.

It will leave permanent divots on his handsome face. Perhaps it will endear him some; she’ll be angry at his choice to follow her into the dark. 

Ah, light. 

She’s close by.

𝆓 ** _n_**.

**Author's Note:**

> um sorry but also lmk if it made you cry  
> edited slightly to clean up poor twt mistakes and grammar


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